I went back through my bullet point timeline. Devin had never once been on-scene at a shooting, though he had been present when Sonya supposedly died. Devin, the child Soul had saved from fire, was our fire assassin. And I was almost willing to bet money that the nanny could shape-shift into a male, and that she was the shooter.
Occam rumbled, “I need to shift.”
“No,” Soul said, putting command into the word. “You need to be able to fire the AR-15 and take out as many salamanders as possible.”
“Why take them out?” I asked. A flash of bloodlust raced through me. Salamander blood, all that rich blue blood. I swallowed the bloody thoughts down, away, but they were there all the same, eager. I finished, “Especially the juveniles. The tadpoles.”
“They are having a party,” Soul said, her tone biting, “around the dead body of Justin Tolliver, whom they are eating. I accept full responsibility for this raid and the salamander deaths.”
Light burst around her body and was snuffed. Her body wavered from human to something nonhuman and back. A sound like bells ringing in the distance sounded before being abruptly cut off. Then Soul stood there again, wearing her armor, though this time it was in shades of blue camo, not the purple of before. Soul was about to lose control of her arcenciel shape. Bells rang again, soft and tinkling. “The human woman we will save,” she said, “if she is truly human and if she lives. But anyone who shifts to lizard will die.” Her words sounded odd, tinkling and chiming, not at all human.
Soul, assistant director of PsyLED, had just condemned sentient beings to death. And then small things came together for me. Soul, who should have been in DC or at Spook School, training new agents, was in Knoxville, on what should have been a relatively simple case. Soul, who nearly shifted when she first heard the word salamander. Soul, who was acting out of character. Soul, whose ancestors had fought a war that decimated the salamanders. Genocide.
I said, “Arcenciels and salamanders hate each other, don’t they? You’re still at war with them.”
Soul’s eyes narrowed. “No. The war ended six thousand years ago. The salamanders were wiped out.” Lights illuminated her face and pearled teeth began to grow from her mouth, long and serrated and wicked-looking. “There can be no salamanders,” she hissed.
“But there are salamanders,” I said. And then I understood. Soul’s worldview had just changed, like what would happen to the members of God’s Cloud of Glory Church when life was found on other planets. Soul had been taught that her ancestors had wiped out the salamanders and yet, here they were in her own backyard and she hadn’t even recognized what they were. “That makes this case personal to you. When it’s personal you have to withdraw. PsyLED regulation . . . I don’t remember which one, but it’s a regulation.”
“I will not withdraw.” Her body began to lose its human contours, drifting and wavering.
“Senior Special Agent LaFleur,” I said, wondering if I was in danger of having my head bitten off by the assistant director of PsyLED. It was probably not very smart, but I went on. “I formally request that Soul be removed from command position and sent back from the front lines.”
“You dare,” she snarled.
“Tomorrow is the first day of the full moon,” I said, holding my ground. “Are arcenciels moon-called?”
Soul reared back, her body glowing, elongating, shifting to her native light dragon form. Wings spread to either side. Her face was terrible.
“Problems,” Rick said over the comms system.
“I noticed,” I said. I was holding my service weapon on the assistant director of PsyLED. Though it was likely that she could bite me in two before I could squeeze the trigger. Occam was trying to shift, or struggling to not shift, stumbling into the shadows, probably pulled into the change by magics in the air and the nearness of the full moon. I was alone with Soul in a tizzy and salamanders riled. “I really noticed.”
“They must have heard you or seen the light show,” Rick said. “Baby salamanders are crawling out of the pool and heading your way. The ground is smoking behind them. Soul. You are formally relieved of command. Probationary Special Agent Nell Ingram, you are now in charge of Mission Salamander.”
“Oh. Oh. Dagnabbit,” I cursed.
Soul shot into the sky, bellowing a challenge.
From the pool, flames surged.
The dead trees above us, offering us scant shelter, burst into fire. I ducked away. Soul whirled and dove. Light blared out, blinding. Her dragon wove itself in the space between trees. Occam was on the ground, also shifting. Over the comms, Rick was growling, rumbling.
Things occurred to me in overlapping images of understanding. We were about to have a bloodbath. Soul and the cats were losing whatever humanity they possessed. JoJo was getting all this on film from the RVAC overhead. The werecats were catty and contagious. And I was now officially, though nominally, in charge—nominally because the chance of anyone listening to me and following my orders was pretty much nil. I was on my own.
Fir trees, dead and dying, exploded in fire, purple-tipped orange flames licking and leaping from tree to tree. Heat blasted over me. I ducked and ran. Wrapped an arm around my head, racing back toward the road, my flesh scorching. The wooden siding on the guesthouse burst into flame. Slender slick forms sped from the pools, crawling like racing snakes. I lunged between the remaining trees as they flared into flashfire. Fire devils whirled into the air. Wind leaped high, roaring with the flame tornadoes. JoJo was shouting in my earbuds, but I couldn’t hear the words over the howl of the fire.
From the sides of the property, the woods awoke.
Fire. Fire. Fire. Fear. Fear. Fire. Fire. Fire, they whispered. The winter-dormant trees and grasses that had survived the salamanders came aware. Their old enemy was among them. Fire, the destroyer, attacking. Fear raced through the earth.
A naked Justin Tolliver—Devin—trailed after the young salamanders. I caught a glimpse as he raced through flames and wasn’t burned. Where his bare feet touched the ground, new flames shot up. He was hunting me. I dashed around the front of the house. The cool air shut off the extraordinary heat and noise, though cold air whistled past me, feeding the fire. Overhead, I saw a flash of light, but when I looked up, Soul was gone. She reappeared, and dove at the pool area, blasting light. JoJo was yelling about fire departments and Tandy and getting my white ass back to the truck. I peeked out from the brick wall.
Devin was striding toward me. He threw out his hands. Fire, orange and soot-dark, shot at me. A spotted leopard leaped in front of the fire.
“Occam!” I shouted. “No!”
The fireball hit him.
The werecat screamed. Fell.
Fury leaped inside me. Leaves burst from my fingertips.
From the trees, Rick LaFleur, in black leopard form, hurtled, dropped down, landing just behind the pyro. He leaped and hit the salamander with front and back feet. They went down, landing hard. Rick bit down on Devin’s neck and he shook the creature like prey.
Blue blood splattered. The thing on the earth rolled, knocking Rick away. Blasted Rick with fire. The werecat screamed and fell, silent.
Knowingly or not, he had given me salamander blood. A great deal of the blue blood. Bloodlust merged with the fury. Needing.
I dropped and shoved my hands into the earth. Breaking nails, digging deep. I caught the droplets of blue blood as they landed. My gift. My curse. I caught the blood and caught the creature it came from. It wasn’t human. Its blood was wrong. But I hungered. I wanted.
The craving for that strange metallic blood roared up in me like the wildfire that consumed the wood. The soil sucked at the blood, the awareness of the trees awakening, turning to the fire but seeking me, ready, impatient. A quiver of power zapped through the trees across the road and through me. I claimed the land with the strange blue blood. The forest was awake and full of fury, seething wi
th need, with blood-hunger, the strange sour metallic blood of the pyro creature. The salamander was mine.
This was my magic, my dark power. To take the life of anyone who bled onto land I claimed as my own. My gift—to feed that life to the woods. The trees pulsed through me. The heat of the fire scorched me as it rounded the corner of the house. Evil air that breathed and burned and killed. Killed Occam. Killed Rick. Killed Occam! I screamed in fury and grief.
I called to the blue blood on the earth, pulling on it, on the life it represented, drawing the burning life force to me, gathering it as if fire webbed between my fingers, buried that life in the dirt. I felt Devin writhing on the ground, his life force disentangling from his body, shuddering through the ground. My magic caught it, pulling it to me and across my flesh, an embrace, a vow, and a threat, burning and scorching and killing.
I shoved Devin’s life away from me, deep underground, dismantling it as I worked, ripping, tearing. The process was slow and purposeful as I fed him to the earth, my mind focused. Aboveground, I burned. The pain my body was experiencing, I ignored. I was on fire, but I couldn’t care. I pulled other salamanders to me, breaking them, bleeding the adults and the tadpoles into the earth. Pulling each body to pieces, each bone and muscle and tendon. Undoing each cell. The life force, alien, strange, fed the land. The flames in the dark slid below me, scratching at me as they went, screaming deep into the dark beneath. Feeding them deeper.
My awareness spread out, to the trees and grasses and shrubs all around. I claimed them, feeding the creatures of fire into them, awakening them, giving them life. What was left of the blue-blooded things, I pushed all deep. Deep. Into the magma I had called to the surface by accident. The salamanders screamed, reached back. They fought. All of them in a single concerted assault. But the magma and the earth wanted the heat that was salamander. Salamanders. All of them. All that rich, strong, potent blue blood and alien life. I fed them to the earth. I fed them to avenge Occam. To avenge his death. I fed and fed. And I learned how feeding truly worked. It was a gift of myself, as much as a sacrifice of blood.
When the salamanders were gone, I reached back to Soulwood and found the walled-off prison that hid and protected Brother Ephraim. I fashioned a blue spear out of the remaining life force of the salamanders and I thrust it into the cell that hid and protected and imprisoned Ephraim. Pointed and sharp, edged and spiked, like a two-edged sword, it slid through the cell wall. The Bible verse came back at me as I pulled back and rammed the pointed edge again into the protective wall. For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
That was what I needed. Something that would divide Ephraim’s soul and spirit and joints and marrow. I hadn’t prayed to God very often, not since I’d killed the first man on Soulwood. Not really. Not with need. But now . . . Now I was avenger and death come calling, and I refashioned the spear into a sword of light and heat. I shouted to the heavens, “Death to Ephraim for the evils of his heart! I claim him for the earth! Death! Death! Until nothing is left for heaven or hell!”
Ephraim gathered the scarlet and black energies into himself. The snakelike power whipped and whirled and began to form a point, a weapon.
The blade of vengeance sliced back and forth through the walls of Brother Ephraim’s prison. I stabbed and cut and ripped into the cavern. Into his snake-energies. Ephraim tried to resist, tried to pull power from the earth, from the church and the tree that shared my genetics. But the sword of vengeance was faster and hotter. Heated by the earth and by the magma that was mine to call. And I sliced into the foul old man’s soul, cutting, cutting, dissolving each sliver of life into separate components—individual thoughts, needs, hopes, memories—and fed them to the heart of the world. This time I didn’t stop too soon. This time I gave myself as I tore and cut and ripped and fed, fed, fed Brother Ephraim to the land until there was nothing left.
Then I tore apart the cavern he had made for his life force. Dismantled the walls, the emptiness, the death he had surrounded himself with. And I cut through the tendrils he had once again sent down into the church land. To the vampire tree. I sliced and destroyed the vine-like coils and shoots of himself that he had sent into the tree. Not hurting the tree itself, but destroying the roots and vines where Ephraim’s life had touched it, had shaped it. He had taken over the tree, turning it into a death tree. He had done this and I hadn’t noted it, hadn’t understood.
When nothing was left of Ephraim or his prison or his control of the vampire tree, I turned my attention back to the land where my burned body lay.
Entwining my energies with the roots and trees nearby, I fed them. Pulled their energies in, replacing the death of the land around me with life. Soulwood stretched out and joined in the battle against the fire, sending groundwater up toward the surface, engulfing the roots, protecting them. The warmth and love and joy of my land entwined with my own soul. Together we communicated goodness and health and strength to the trees all around me, bringing the burned land and all that still contained a spark of life to fecund, flourishing, abundant health.
Life, green and full of all good things, burst forth.
Feeding it, I claimed the land.
I felt it when roots grew into and from my body and plunged deep. I felt it when they rose again and burst through the crust of dead grass and sprouted new trees. Felt it when the trees sprouted leaves out of season. Felt them grow tall and strong. Grass and vines and flowering plants followed. The land came alive. It pulled me into it. It enfolded me. And the pain of burning I hadn’t even noticed vanished. I leafed out. I grew.
Yes, I whispered to the land, to the trees. Grow. Live.
• • •
Much, much later, after the full moon had waxed and waned, I felt the vibrations of footsteps, footsteps I had once known. And . . . ahhh. Soul. Soul, in human form, walked across the new leaves and grasses growing atop the crisped and charred land to me. I felt her kneel beside me. Felt her touch on my side. But I couldn’t come back to her. I was part of the earth now. I was part of this land. Here there was no fear or grief. No worry or pain. Here I would stay. I felt Soul move away.
• • •
Sun fell upon me. Rain watered me. Moon rose and fell, waxed and waned and waxed again. Birds perched on me. My forest grew. My trees grew. Grasses and shrubs and deer and rabbits. Foxes. A family of bear. I was alive. I was the land and it was me. Soulwood was part of us and roots thrust deep. The land was alive with me.
• • •
Moons later, when the days had grown longer and the earth had warmed with spring, I again felt Soul return, this time not alone. There were others with her, tromping on the earth, between the saplings and mature trees that were my land. There were humans and were-creatures and a witch and they gathered about me. And . . . there was a creature like me.
Some part of my understanding woke. I understood what Soul had done. She had brought with her the sentient creatures that my former self knew. There were two in animal form, one which belonged to me, which I had claimed. Rick LaFleur. That was what this one was called. Black were-leopard. He had died. But he had died on land I claimed. And I had . . . I had given the land a great portion of the salamanders’ life force, but I had kept something back. With it, with the help of Soulwood, he had been healed.
Rick draped himself across my body. Purring. His claws extruded and pressed into the wood that I had become. He milked the wood, claws in and out, pricking me as a woodpecker might, though there were no insects within me.
Occam pressed beside him. Occam had died as well, and I had shared the land with him. I had claimed him as I had claimed the trees. He was mine. He laid his cat across my roots and he shifted into his other form. His human form. He was different, disfigured, scarred from the salamanders??
? fire. I had not been able to save him from all the damage.
T. Laine, moon witch. Soul herself. Tandy, empath, whose thoughts were clear to me. He missed me. He wanted my old self back. JoJo, who was human and silent and perhaps . . . appalled at my new form.
And Mud, sister of my mother’s body. She was like me. She was part of the land.
Mud placed her hand upon my form and said, “Nell, come back. I’m callin’ you’un back.” She pressed her fingernails into the wood that had once been my shoulder and said, “Come back. Come back now.” She shoved Rick out of the way and pressed herself onto the wooden shape that was all that was left of the human I had never been.
Mud’s strength. Her life. Her greenness reached out to me. Her life force was strong and dancing, the way buttercups danced in a summer wind. The way tree limbs beat against the sky in a spring storm. And she watered my wood.
“You’un need to come back,” she wailed. “You’un need to teach me. And you’un got to deal with the vampire tree. It’s growing to your’n land. It’s lookin’ for you’un, putting up sprouts everywhere, between the church’s gate and the cliff to Soulwood. If’n you don’t come back, Sam’s gonna set something he calls C-4 on the tree and explode it. Or poison the land to stop it. But I don’t want it to die. It’s special, or it can be, if’n you’un’ll finish what you started.” Softer, she said, “I need you, Nellie. I’m scared. And I’m alone. And I’m afeared they’s gonna give me away, no matter what I do.” Wetness fell upon my bark and my bare wood. She watered me. She watered my wood.
Tears. Mud was crying. For me. For herself.
Daddy had been sick. Daddy had been failing and growing close to death. Daddy might be dead . . . If he was gone, then no one stood between the churchmen and Mud. They would force her . . . force her to marry one of them.
I tore my arm, with its roots, out of the earth and reached around. Clasped Mud’s body to me. With my other hand, I reached up and tore my jaw free of the roots that bound me to the earth. “Cut me free,” I said, the words grinding as sand on stone. “Cut me free of the land. Take me to Soulwood.”